Kenneth D. Crews is an attorney, author, professor, and international copyright consultant. At the center of his work for Gipson Hoffman & Pancione clients is finding creative solutions to diverse copyright and intellectual property challenges. He has negotiated and developed strategic approaches to the contentious nuances of copyright ownership and acquisitions, work made for hire, fair use, termination of transfers, and licensing rights. His legal work is primarily transactional, but Dr. Crews also provides specialized support for litigation and has been an expert witness in a wide range of copyright cases, involving fair use, university policies, software ownership, transfer terms, artworks, and fabric design on bikini swimsuits.
Examples of his specialized and diverse intellectual property work include:
- Counseling and guiding leading research universities, museums, and other large institutions as they develop innovative digital platforms for teaching, research, publishing, and library services.
- Identifying and protecting the intellectual property assets of businesses and nonprofits; drafting original policies and agreements with respect to creating, managing, and licensing of copyrights, patents, trademarks, databases, publicity rights, and more.
- Negotiating and drafting publication agreements with prominent publishers of books, journals, recordings, web content, and more.
- Clearing rights to a diverse range of copyrighted works, including motion pictures, books, music, and sound recordings; tracing histories of works, interpreting early agreements, determining ownership rights, and resolving complex questions of public domain and termination of copyright transfers.
- Representing high-profile clients to negotiate and conclude confidential acquisitions of intellectual property rights and original artworks.
- Facilitating corporate mergers and acquisitions, from modest to monumental values, by investigating and inventorying all forms of intellectual property included in the transactions and negotiating terms of the sale and purchase.
Kenneth Crews served nearly twenty-five years on the law faculties of leading universities, including Indiana and Columbia Universities. He has been an invited speaker in forty-five states and on six continents and has consulted with national governments on copyright reform in all parts of the world. The World Intellectual Property Organization (a U.N. agency) commissioned him to analyze copyright exceptions from all 193 member countries, and that study is informing current discussions in Geneva regarding possible treaty development.
Known to many of his friends and clients as Kenny Crews, he received the Mark T. Banner Award from the American Bar Association, Section of Intellectual Property Law, and he was the first recipient of the L. Ray Patterson Copyright Award from the American Library Association. He is the author of multiple books and is listed in Who’s Who in America. He enjoys art, architecture, movies, hiking, biking, and early rock and roll.